Merriam-Webster added 530 new words to the dictionary, including an additional definition of “they”, and we couldn’t be happier for our nonbinary folks! The added definition of “they” was to include the use of the word as a nonbinary pronoun. According to Merriam-Webster, “they” is "used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary," or a person who doesn't identify as a man or a woman.

The next time some ignorant, awful person, chose to disrespect someone’s pronouns because it’s not valid, they can use Merriam-Webster’s official addition to counter. Not that they need to do that, when respect should be for anyone, regardless of gender. 

(via Popsugar)

image credit: via Popsugar

Hurricane Dorian,a storm that started as a Category 3 that intensified into a Category 5 in a short span of time, wreaked havoc in the Bahamas. While some may attribute the storm’s change to climate change and global warming, scientists also point out a reason as to how the storm got stronger. The warm waters of Bahamas helped sustain (and intensify) one of the most destructive storms that the Bahamas had experienced. Warm waters, according to researchers, serve as a fuel to intensify a storm’s fire. National Geographic has the details: 

The fourth National Climate Assessment predicted hurricanes could become more intense and destructive as the climate warms. Some studies suggest a warming atmosphere could make for slower winds, and research is increasingly showing that warmer conditions make hurricanes slower and wetter.

He explains that both the temperature at the surface of the ocean and the depth of the warm water contribute to how strong a hurricane becomes.

“How strong a hurricane can get depends on warm it is,” says McNoldy.

When those storms are exposed to enough warm water and westbound winds, they can form what’s called a tropical depression, in which an area of drier, cooler air rushes to fill the void left by rapidly rising warm air.

Like adding more fuel to a fire, warm water (whether heated by regular summer temperatures or greenhouse gases) make hurricanes stronger.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Who says you can't have a giant bear to cuddle with?

Japanese shop, Dinos, presents their “Picasso” animal series, offering you cute animal-themed interior items to surround yourself with. These huge realistic bear cushions are waiting for your embrace!

Get one for yourself in Dinos’ online shop.

Image Credit: PR Times

An experimental device is helping a handful of volunteers see. The device, called Orion, captures images and transforms them into dots of light the patients can see. Patients can see images in various shapes: a circle, oval, or a moving line, according to Dr. Nader Pouratian, the lead researcher for the Orion. CBS News has more details: 

Here's how it works. Using a camera attached to a pair of sunglasses, Orion captures images a person would see and then sends the data through a handheld device to an implant that's been surgically inserted into the visual part of the brain. The implant then turns those images into dots of light the patient can see.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Who would have imagined that cats can have beautifully structured houses like this?

Curving concrete. Modular construction. Sustainable materials. Roof gardens. These are the elements of some of the finest architectural projects across the globe. It just so happens those dwellings belong to cats, not people.

In an annual event, the nonprofit Architects for Animals rallied several of the most celebrated architecture firms in the world to design a series of cat shelters that wouldn’t be out of place in a designer living room. The goal is to create awareness for the safety and well-being of our feline friends. But the project is a spectacle of design, which marries well-considered cat housing with some extremely memorable creations.

Check out more sophisticated houses for our dear cats here.

Image Credit: Meghan Bob Photography

Narrative endings are very difficult to craft from a writer's perspective because usually a writer comes up with several ways to end a story, but it's a struggle to find the one most fitting to tie up the plot, bring the message home, and make an impact on the audience. Toy Story 4 would have received a widely different reaction if they had gone for this alternative ending.

The film's director, Josh Cooley, seems to acknowledge this in the brief commentary which leads off the clip. "Finding the ending of a movie is extremely hard," he says, demonstrating his complete mastery of understatement. "Especially a Toy Story film, where you want it to be really impactful and really emotional. This one came pretty close."

(Image credit: Disney, Pixar; IMDb)

Here are some good ideas for handling an angry cat for medical purposes. You might think this is a real veterinary training video, because it resembles so many of them (this one in particular), but that notion is cleared up pretty quickly. Still, for realism, the "cat" deserves an Oscar. If you can stop laughing long enough, you might even learn something here. -via reddit

Children's books and stories may seem prosaic and irrelevant to adults, but quite the opposite, we can get just as much inspiration from them as we would in any other literary work.

Remember, fairy tales were aimed to teach children valuable morals, even though some people seem to think of them as silly stories. But, originally, they weren't sprinkled with fairy dust. They revealed some harsh realities to help children became aware of the world they live in.

The potency of a great kid’s book is the all-around cleverness of its concept: how precisely the book knows its reader, what they’ve already read and loved (or rejected), and how exactly it speaks directly to her buried fascinations or fears.

Nearly all the same conditions—saturation, impatience, jadedness, ingenuity, exactitude—make the business of designing a knockout corporate website, company brochure, or infographic equally fraught with challenges.

(Image credit: Josh Applegate/Unsplash)

Delving into the world of horror films can bring a new level of excitement and thrill to fans. With the I Like Scary Movies exhibit, they can actually experience a bit of what it feels like to be in their favorite horror film. And this fall, the exhibit will feature Friday the 13th, along with others like A Nightmare on Elmstreet and IT.

I Like Scary Movies gives fans the unique opportunity to interact and enjoy the films that they love in a completely new way with amazing photo opportunities to share with friends.

This time around, horror hounds will be able to visit Camp Crystal Lake for something new and quite unexpected. I Like Scary Movies has been described as 'the experience that all scary movie fans have been dreaming of, and the perfect thrill for those who relish in the eerie ambiance of the season'.

(Image credit: Movie Web/I Like Scary Movies)

If you’re someone who can’t start your day without drinking a cup of coffee (like me), then probably coffee, not blood, runs in your veins already (just kidding). People like us know how important it is to start our day with coffee.

Did you know that caffeine has the potential to improve athletic performance? Numerous studies have shown that it has positive effects on strength, power output, and endurance. It is no wonder, therefore, that companies now are infusing ingredients like mushrooms and algae with coffee.

Outside Online presents to us six of these “next-gen coffee”. See them over at the site.

(Image Credit: Christoph/ Pixabay)

(A)Dressing Our Hidden Truths is an exhibition housed at the National Museum of Ireland-Decorative Arts and History, installed in a warren of small black rooms, and shows the crimes perpetrated by the Catholic church against women and children. Created by Northern Irish artist Alison Lowry, the exhibition’s primary medium is “pâte’ de verre,” (“paste of glass”) a labor-intensive 19th century form of glass casting. The beauty and aesthetic of the exhibition amplified the horror that it depicts, the slavery and abuse done by the church towards women and children, as Hyperallergic detailed: 

The first cases illustrate how women were shorn of their hair, their possessions and even their name; they were given new, Biblical names by the nuns.

The first object one encounters upon entering the exhibition is a life-sized, old-fashioned work apron fabricated of unfired pâte de verre over fabric. The beads of glass are textural and thick, giving the apron a slight fuzziness — like an old-time photograph that is slightly out of focus. The apron is both hard and soft, an interesting visual metaphor for the labor of laundry.

A brief background: In 2012 a mass grave holding the bodies of 796 children was discovered in Tuam, Ireland on the former site of St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, an institution run by the Bon Secours Sisters order of nuns from 1921 to 1965. Mother and baby homes (a tragically ironic name) were homes for unwed mothers and their children, many of whom were forcibly taken from their mothers for adoption, and the women forced into manual labor to “pay” for their care. The hygienic and medical conditions were abysmal; as a result, many of the babies, children, and mothers died.

The Magdalene Laundries, a Catholic institution run by nuns where unwanted women and children worked in forced servitude benefitting the church as a lucrative laundry facility. It is estimated that upwards of 30,000 women and teenage girls lived in slavery in these institutions from roughly 1760 until 1996, when the last workhouse was closed. 

image credit: Peter Moloney via Hyperallergic

“Don’t pick up wildlife,” warned officials after a Colorado Springs woman, on Wednesday, just put a 20-pound (9-kilogram) bobcat inside her car, inches away from the safety seat where her 3-year-old son was.

Bill Vogrin, the spokesman for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife, states that the woman saw the injured adult male bobcat while driving, and wrapped it in a blanket and put it in the back of her SUV.

Agency officials told her to get her boy and herself out of the vehicle when she called to ask what to do.

Vogrin says District Wildlife Manager Sarah Watson responded to the call, opened a door and slammed it shut when she spotted the 20-pound (9-kilogram) cat.

Watson used a trapping device to remove the animal, which was hissing and resisting despite severe internal injuries and paralyzed rear legs. The mortally injured cat was euthanized.

Hopefully the bobcat is in bobcat heaven now, but this is still sad news.

(Image Credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife via AP)

Last year, Kristen Sorensen was diagnosed with a rare disorder called Guillain Barre syndrome, which affects the nervous system, and the then 55-year-old woman was paralyzed from the neck down.

"It came out of nowhere," says Sorensen. "I'd been fine and exercising every day, but it just started with tingling in my fingertips then progressed."

Sorensen never expected to walk again.

But earlier that year, the Brooks Cybernic Treatment Center in Jacksonville, Florida, became the first US center to use a unique rehabilitative technology developed in Japan -- the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL).

HAL -- essentially a wearable cyborg -- helps those with spinal cord injuries and muscular dystrophy regain their movements and strengthen their nerves and muscles. Known as exoskeletons, they're a type of lightweight suit, with joints powered by small electric motors, that serve as mechanical muscle.

Here's what's truly mind-blowing: Patients use their brain waves to control them.

See more details over at CNN.

(Image Credit: CNN)

Nobody wants to see trash lying around on the streets (or anywhere for that matter), but sometimes we're just too lazy to throw our own trash in the proper place. And it can accumulate and lead to drastic consequences affecting the environment which later on comes back to bite us.

So in an effort to instill awareness about littering to the people in Kiev, Ukraine, CleanMyMac X created an anti-littering campaign involving a pile of trash scaring people on the streets.

Can you scare people into being litter-conscious? We’ve been trying to figure out just that with our CleanMyCity prank inspired by CleanMyMac X. Whenever unsuspecting folks would drop a piece of litter onto the pile, the “junk” would suddenly rise up and chase them back.

(Image credit: CleanMyMac/Geek Tyrant)

Looking for a great place to chill out and play your favorite video games? Harow’s compact sofa got you!

This can be made with custom sizes and artwork. Plus it is made from recycled wood, steel and velvet-covered cushions.

What a great way to enjoy home!

Photos are from The Awesomer Website